On a recreational scale, most would say golf is healthy, but not thriving. Good courses have tee times stacked from dawn ‘til dusk during the heart of the season, but some other courses just aren’t as popular. There was a golf course design boom in the latter part of the 1990s and early 2000s but now that bubble has burst, and a lot of those courses now sit empty or unfinished, making beautiful plots of land lay ugly.

There’s also this crucial fact: to many, golf isn’t fun. The rounds take five hours. The holes are too long. Their fellow golfers are too rude, and going to the driving range and acting like Happy Gilmore is more enticing than trying to make your first ace.